All The Pieces
by Lamanth
Summary: ONE SHOT – Because it's easy to take things to pieces. Now, putting them back together, that's the real trick. Kakashi/Ino


**Disclaimer:** I don't own Naruto or any of its characters, merchandise, TV rites, ect… (I think you get the point.)

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Summary 

ONE SHOT – Because it's easy to take things to pieces. Now, putting them back together, that's the real trick. (Kakashi/Ino)

Like all of my work this is just something that happened to float through the empty void inside my head. Like it or hate it please R and R as honest opinions are always welcomed, as are random acts of worship.

"Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished and persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."

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_Step by step, Heart to heart,  
Left, right, left, We all fall down,  
Like toy soldiers,  
Bit by bit, Torn apart,  
We never win, But the battle wages on,  
For toy soldiers,_

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**All The Pieces**

Broken.

Broken was the word that he understood better than any other. He knew by heart the diluted meaning the dictionary offered. But more than that he knew the hidden subtleties, the secret meanings and the deep, dark undercurrent. Every nuance was known and familiar to him.

He knew too about all the many and varied ways that something could be broken. Each thing was different but each had its braking point. Some might crack while others might crumble. He'd seen them all the snapped and chipped. The split and the crushed. Sooner or later they all fell to pieces, it didn't matter how much he tried to hold them together, he was never strong enough. No one was strong enough to do that.

But most importantly he understood what it felt like to be broken. Knew the pain that flowed as free as wine when the world as he had known it collapsed and he shattered. When all that was left was crimson stained earth and the fragmented remains of the dream that was forever out of reach.

There were no words that could describe how he had felt in the weeks and months and years that followed. Nightly still his dreams returned to him the team-mate that gave so much who he had been unable to save. To the girl that, try as he might, he hadn't been able to hold to. And also the sensei who had died too soon with so much left to give.

It was the little things and the big things and the all the rest in-between things. One by one and day by day. All the events slowly chipping away at lives that people tried to build until they were reduced to nothing but a pile of rubble and a few tattered memories that were impossible to let go of. Like the bare branches of the tree that sheds its leaves like forgotten hopes.

And now she was the one who was broken.

She had been broken too many times and inexpertly stuck back together. Time and time again her mind had shattered, the splintered shards of her sanity flying free before they could be caught and put back together. Lines and cracks ran through her life, where fumbling hands had blindly tried to glue the pieces of her into something resembling the whole she should be.

It would take weeks and months for him to get through to her. Far too long to brake through the walls she had built so she wouldn't be broken again. But the truth was no one, not even she herself, could remember a time when she had not being broken.

This golden girl understood the harsh, painful intricacies of being broken. She had spent the majority of her adult life seeing to it that other people broke down and fell to pieces. She had based her whole career on taking people apart, braking them for the good of the village she called home. But she also understood that if you tried hard enough, wanted it badly enough that just about anything broken could be fixed.

No one, anywhere was strong enough to hold someone else together. But, just maybe, from the ruins of what had been those two people could build something new, something better, something stronger. And together they might just be strong enough to keep from breaking again.

So Yamanaka Ino let Hatake Kakashi put her back together.

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Please R and R I'd love to know what you thought.

Big love and inspiration

Lamanth


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